This book is a smart read, but an exceedingly difficult one. I am a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics and this was still over my head at times not just with all the discussion of neurology, but because of the author's argumentative style. Beauregard devotes much of the book to a sort of apologetic defence of non-materialist science and a refutation of the claims of such philosopher-scientists as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. While this is an important aspect of the book, Beauregard sometimes states a claim by one of his competitors and follows it with a comment that suggests that "what is wrong with this logic is obvious," when to me both his and his opponents' claims were sometimes incredibly dense and tough to parse. I also feel that the philosophy overwhelmed the presentation of solid data; Beauregard promises throughout the early part of the book that he is going to offer proof from studies of Carmelite nuns, but this actually takes up only a very short chapter near the end. I feel that the subject matter of this book is of tremendous importance and that the arguments in it are worthy of discussion, so I wish it had been slightly more accessible to the average reader. Religious and spiritual audiences may or may not be disappointed that Beauregard's tactic throughout seems to be to assert that neurological studies do not prove or disprove any particular theological claim, and thus even when it is somewhat transparent that he is writing from a Christian perspective, he refuses to actively pursue arguments from that angle. However, the aforementioned Carmelite nun chapter also ends with a series of sidebars explaining the history of the Carmelite order and its most famous adherents, such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, which seems out of place in the theologically neutral and neurologically oriented context of the rest of the book. The most interesting contributions I found in this work were its summaries of studies on a so-called "God helmet" and on near-death experiences, and these sections will probably also be the most accessible to the average reader. ( )